SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 09/26/07 -- According to a survey conducted by online
polling and market research survey provider Vizu Corporation, over 42% of
PC users fail to defragment their computers, even though IT experts agree
that defragging is one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways to
enhance computer speed and functionality. Even though businesses stand to
save both time money by using defragmentation as part of their regular
computer maintenance protocol, a surprising number of businesses are not
even aware of the damage file fragmentation does to the efficiency of their
operations.
Despite the importance of defragging computer files, an astonishing 28% of
survey respondents admitted that they didn't even know what disk
fragmentation is!
During normal computer usage, a single program or file will be broken up,
or fragmented, into little pieces and stored in many different areas of the
hard disk. Such fragmentation slows down the speed at which data is
accessed because the disk drive must search through countless locations to
put together a single file. The more broken up the information is, the
longer it takes to access the data and the slower the computer becomes.
The increasing size of applications, operating systems, and multimedia
files such as songs, photos and movies, as well as the greater storage
capacity of larger hard drives, has increased problems caused by
fragmentation, making defragging even more essential. Defragmentation can
enable such common activities such as word processing, web-surfing, and
anti-virus scans to proceed as much as 15 times faster by reorganizing the
fragments on a hard disk into contiguous files.
Enterprise computers are especially vulnerable to the effects of
fragmentation, because the greater the number of files, the greater a
problem fragmentation becomes. In addition to ordinary business files, in
the enterprise environment, additional factors come into play. Recent
government regulations, including Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), and the
Patriot Act, all have mandates requiring secure storage of critical
information that can run to millions of files. In many cases, deleting
such files is actually a federal offence.
In the enterprise, all servers and workstations across the network need to
be defragged. Files in an enterprise environment are typically stored in
Storage Area Networks (SANs) or Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems, and
the fragmentation of these files needs to be regularly attended to. But
many temporary files are also stored locally, and fragmentation of local
files undermines the performance of Web browsers and email programs.
Obviously, then, defragging is essential, but too many enterprise IT
departments fail to incorporate defragging as part of their routine
computer maintenance. This neglect can lead to costly problems ranging from
slow file processing speed, to downtime because of application errors, to
an outright crash -- not to mention the man hours spent on troubleshooting
slow servers, increased calls to the help desk, and possibly even the
purchase of new hardware.
Experts recommend that end users defrag their computers regularly to
optimize performance. In fact, in enterprise environments, some analysts
advise daily defragmentation for critical systems.
Businesses that ignore fragmentation can suffer from both reduced
productivity and increased costs. A simple, cost-effective solution to the
problem of file fragmentation is to regularly run an effective disk
defragmenter utility, designed to reorganize noncontiguous files into
contiguous files and optimize their placement on the hard drive for
increased reliability and performance.
As the Vizu survey shows, far too many enterprise end users fail to
recognize how important defragging is -- and how simple it can be.
About Vizu
Vizu provides services that make online opinion polling and market research
easy, accessible, and affordable to everyone. The company's premiere
service, Vizu Answers (www.VizuAnswers.com), combines an innovative market
research technology with a vast network of relevant web sites, offering
highly targeted audiences to answer a wide variety of questions.
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